Leaving Avignon we had plotted a course to Gorge du Verdon via Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, a town just to the north of the lake the gorge empties into, with the hope of finding a spot to camp for the night. As we drove closer to our destination it was obvious that the journey on the following day would be stunning based on the mountainous terrain we started to go through. Our first obstacle on this trek came when we discovered that:

• Moustiers-Sainte-Marie was a village built into the cliff face, which was very scenic especially with it's own waterfall running through parts of the village, but not a place we wanted to take our van,
• Although there were signs showing the numerous campsites in the area, all were closed,
• Free camping was forbidden everywhere we looked.

Not to be deterred and wanting to see the lake as well before we navigated the gorge we headed a little south, checking all the campsites we passed for whether they were open, to no avail. In the end we stumbled upon a site that we think allowed free camping but didn't care eitherway as we had tried our best and the sun was setting in an area where night driving involved winding roads with a cliff on one side. As such we parked up for the night in this area and enjoyed an amazing night with absolute silence and enough stars to make a movie.

When we woke in the morning we were surrounded by snow. This was delightfully unexpected as everywhere we had driven so far in France had been cold and green. We took our time in the morning to allow some of the light snow to dissipate before heading on our way. On our trip to the campsite we had driven past the lake and were amazed at the stunning turquoise colour of the water that was so consistent that it seemed as if paint had been dropped into it. Even with the overcast day this had not changed and we slowly made our way to the north road around the gorge at a snails pace while we took it all in.

After the snow I was mindful of the roads, which looked as if they had just been cleared, but more so due to the small winding mountain roads which continued to be very good regardless of their narrow width. This continued for a fair while, occasional snowy banks would appear on the roadside or as we past through villages. As we past through Castellane we noticed the first sign that recommended snow chains, which we did not have. From our limited experience in the Sierra Nevada we assumed that there would be advisories indicating when these should be put on plus the multitude of campervans around us without them set us at ease.

Shortly after the snow started to fall lightly again as we followed a campervan up the road (at a slow pace of about 50km) and everything seemed fine until our GPS told us to take a left while everyone else seemed to continue right. At this stage two things happened, our road levelled out and the snow started falling in earnest. We started to become concerned when we first saw someone pull over to put chains on and even more so as the road started to disappear in the white that now surrounded us. We considered turning around or stopping but feared that we may get stuck so continued on at a pace slow enough to allow us to stop quickly but that still kept us moving forward. Things continued to go down hill (unfortunately not literally) as the snow and sludege thickened with the visibility dropping when, after far too long, we started to descend. 

At this point it was still snowing, the roads were still worse at best and we were still too high up. As we slowly descended at the leisurely pace of 20km an hour, made up for by the 200km/h my heart was racing at, we came to a bend and the car decided it didn't want to turn resulting in us slowly drifting toward the edge where we quickly became bogged but thankfully not over the edge about 4metres away. Thankfully we were able to rock ourselves out of this and continue down, now at 2km an hour with half of France trailing behind us (the other half were on the ascent pulled over putting snow chains on). 

Finally we had descended enough that things become less stressful and with a startling abruptness we passed out of a tunnel and into lush green mountains split by the amazing Verdon river. From here to Nice our journey seemed downright boring and when we finally arrived had no stomch for yet another French town (especially one known for it's beaches that we couldn't swim in), so we headed for the border and crossed into Italy.